Her newfound confidence manifested itself in other areas of her life as well. She became more assertive in her relationship with her boyfriend and her family, as well as in her job. She moved away from home, started a walking regimen and finally got the wire-haired fox terrier she always wanted. In short, Kathy learned to speak up for herself and to act more decisively in her own interests. During a follow-up interview, she told Tom she was in better health and was paying more attention to her own needs. Kathy's new confidence also helped land her a more responsible position at work.

Integrated care was a godsend for Kathy. Aided by medical and behavioral professionals working in concert, she made changes in every facet of her life. Had Kathy not entered an integrated system, she might have continued to show up in the emergency room or the cardiologist's office, receiving costly, ineffective services. If she had encountered integrated health care from the beginning, she might have gotten the help she needed earlier and avoided the frustration of repeated but futile visits to doctors.

This is the beauty of an integrated system, its supporters say. Patients get a reliable diagnosis from a properly trained professional and no longer need to diagnose themselves. They get the medical and therapeutic care they need quickly and cost effectively. The system becomes more coherent--with mental health services easily available, but only through the primary care physician. The bottom line: Carve-ins--done right--increase collaboration, improve care and make psychotherapy more central to health care. And save insurance companies a lot of money.

The Nightmare of Integrated Care

So if carving in offers all this, why do many therapists fear it could undermine our relationship with clients, rob us of our creativity and challenge the fundamental values that underlie good psychotherapy? While the case of Kathy and the Marillac Clinic represents integrated care at its best, such success stories can lull us into underestimating the insidious and deeply ingrained mind-set of the traditional medical model--the idea that proper diagnosis plus prescriptive intervention equals effective treatment. What is obscured is the very real danger that in the name of "integration," psychotherapy will become ever more dominated by the assumptions of the medical model. At issue here is not the theoretical advantages of greater collaboration among health care professionals or bringing more of a therapeutic perspective to bear on medical conditions, but whether we will lose our bearings--and our autonomy--as a profession by becoming immersed in the powerful professional culture of biomedicine today.